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Published: August 17th 2009
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The are two options for those visiting Rurrenabaque: A pampas tour or a jungle tour. Nearly all the tour operators were pushing the pampas tour, and nobody seemed interested in taking us into the jungle. However, since we had come to see the Amazon rainforest, it seemed strange to then only visit the pampas. Wer wanted to see big trees and were also under the impression that the pampas tour would be very busy with large tour goups. So when one of the operators we talked to finally got excited about the jungle and told us it would be a much better, more intimate and authentic tour, we opted to go with them. This was a decision well made. The tour guides were a family-run operation, of Tacana people who still live and work most of the time in the forest. They looked after us well, with really good food, enthusiastic and interesting guides, and as promised the group was small. It was also extremely good value for money. We were taken upriver on a motorised boat and stopped first at a sugar cane plantation, where we made juice using a wooden man-powered sugar-cane press to extract the sweet juice. It
comes out a brownish colour and was very refreshing with a squeeze of lime added. We then had lunch at camp further upriver, spent half an hour lazing in hammocks, then had a couple of hours walking in the forest with our guide, Darwin. He stopped regularly to show us various medicinal and other useful plants and tree barks. We also saw some wild pigs, chancha. They smell worse than anything you have ever smelt. They release a pungent liquid from glands in their backs. As soon as they sensed us, they were off, charging noisily through the undergrowth.
That night we went for a walk in the dark with our torches, along the river bank, looking for alligators. You couldn't make out any shapes, but we did see eyes reflecting back at us in the torchlight. There were no clouds and the milky way was clearly visible. Afterwards we slept surprisingly well in our mosquito-netted beds.
In the morning we set out on a 4 hour hike through more forest, and saw more pigs (clearly this time), monkeys, toucans and ocelott footprints. We returned to camp for lunch and a rest before setting off for a proper night's camping
in the depths of the jungle. Four hours later we arrived, and were quite shocked to see that there were no tents! We were to sleep on sheets on the hard floor of a clearing with only a mosquito net for protection. This undid all my good work assuring Josie that jaguars wouldn't try to get into a zipped up tent. The evening was comedy though, with our guide/chef concocting a wild pig pasta medley in a large pan over the fire, seeming to chuck in just about everything he could find. It tasted good however, especially in the open air.
Bedtime wasn't so much fun. Sleeping on hard ground was uncomfortable to say the least and neither of us got much sleep. At around midnight Josie poked me in the ribs and woke me up. "Something is sniffing around our net" she whispered. We both lay there very still for ages, not even daring to breathe or look around us. We could hear all sorts of shuffling and breathing noises close by. Eventually, too worn out to be terrified, we must have dropped off and slept fitfully for a couple of hours. Needless to say, we were both glad
to wake up at 5am, alive and uneaten and unmolested. Our ever-cheerful guide then took us on a pre-dawn torchlit walk, in the hope that we might spot a Jaguar. Josie was rather hoping we wouldn't spot a jaguar, as it might still be hungry at this time. We didn't see any Jaguars, but i had a go at swinging tarzan-like from some vines.
Later we climbed to a cliff-top to watch parrots fly from their nests below us. Then in the afternoon we built a raft and rafted back downstream to camp for a last lunch before returning to Rurrenabaque.
That night I discovered I'd unwittingly brought back a souvenir from our trip. I awoke in the early hours with a biting pain in my right leg. On going to the bathroom to check it out I found a huge tick trying to burrow into my thigh. Luckily, due to my recent jungle training I knew what to do. I upended the critter onto its back with my nail, at which it released its death grip on my thigh, and I was able to flush it down the loo. Josie was quite bemused when she woke later and I
made a thorough inspection of her. I think she thought I had other motives.
Another highlight of Rurrenabaque, not to be overlooked, is the steak served at the Luna Lounge (and their breakfasts too). Fillet steak the size of a house for 3 quid. Yum.
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